A Missing Heart(30)

It seems as though things are progressing for the worse every day, and I’m scared to think what our situation might be like in a year from now. I’m scared for Tori in general. Today, I saw a side of her I didn’t know existed, and I’m not sure I know how to handle another situation like that if it were to arise.

It’s awful that I’ve considered taking Gavin to Mom and Dad’s to crash for a few days so I can clear my head a bit, but I don’t think that’s the best thing for Gavin.

As I’m rinsing the suds from my hair, I hear Gavin begin to cry. Poor guy must be hurting again. I lost track of the time but I’m guessing the six-hour dose of ibuprofen is close to being up. I lean my forehead against the cold, gray-slate-tiled wall, watching the drops of water trickle down my nose and fall to the basin of the tub, wishing for just another few minutes in the shower. As I wait a minute or two to see if the crying stops, I only hear the sound grow louder. Just rock him, Tori. That always soothes him.

A ten-minute shower is pretty much the longest one I’ve had since Gavin was born, so I shouldn’t have expected anything more now, even so late at night.

I step out onto the shaggy bathmat and dry off quickly before stepping into my shorts. I grip the edges of the sink basin as I look in the mirror at my sleep-deprived appearance—the puffy bags under my eyes, the lines curving downward from both corners of my mouth, and even some small indentations forming on my forehead. In the last four months, I look as if I’ve aged ten years, and again, I remind myself how desperate I am for a real break.

As I’m pulling the bathroom door open, the shrieks grow louder, and it’s immediately apparent that the screams aren’t just from Gavin, but from Tori too. What the f*ck is going on?

I race through the house and up to Gavin’s dark bedroom. I flip the lights on, finding Tori in nothing but a t-shirt and panties. She’s sitting awkwardly—one leg outstretched in front and the other bent behind her. Tori is in the middle of the floor with Gavin, who is squirming and screaming in front of her. “What the hell are you doing?” I shout at her, leaning over to lift Gavin from the cold hardwood floor.

“He won’t stop screaming,” she shrieks. “I can’t take it anymore. Why won’t he just stop?” Why today, of all days, does she need to pull this shit? I’m fighting the pain of not being with my daughter on her birthday today and she’s fighting the pain of being with our son.

Every part of me wants to ask her how old she is and why the hell she’s crying over a crying baby, especially a baby that is ours, but that she rarely has to take care of. Except, every minute longer I spend in this marriage with her, I continue to see she has no clue how old she is or why she’s acting the way she is. Yeah, this is hard. Yeah, a baby can push a sane person through the fine line between sanity and insanity, but as adults, we hold it together. We have to. “He’s in pain, T. He needs more meds.”

“I can’t stand listening to him cry,” she says, as her voice calms from the cries she was emitting earlier.

“Are you safe?” I ask her. It’s so cold, blunt, and to the goddamn truth, but Jesus, she hasn’t acted like this before and I’m scared for both of us—mostly her. It’s like something cracked within her, and she’s shattering from the inside out.

“Am I safe?” she asks, pulling herself up by the windowsill. “Am I f*cking safe?” Her question forms into laughter, and the lack of response is sadly answering my question. She’s shaking, her knees are bowed in toward one another and her skin is becoming paler by the second. Her eyes are bulging with tiny red veins and her chest is heaving harder and faster than it should. I can only assume she’s having a panic attack since I’m not sure what else could be happening.

“What’s your doctor’s number, T?”

“You’re not calling my goddamn doctor,” she says pleadingly, through weak breaths.

“I’ll call 9-1-1 if I have to. You’re clearly in trouble right now, and God, I would do just about anything to help you, but you won’t even help yourself by telling me what the hell is going on.”

“Don’t threaten me, AJ,” she warns.

“Babe, this isn’t a threat.” I manage to calm Gavin down for a minute, so I place him in his crib and flip the mobile on to quiet him down. With my own shallow breaths not doing much to keep me composed, I force myself to relax for Gavin’s sake.

I turn toward Tori, looking in her eyes, realizing she doesn’t look like the woman I know, and she hasn’t for quite some time. Through thick and thin. Through thick and thin. Closing the space between us, I wrap my arms around her and squeeze tightly. I don’t say a word; I just hold her.

“I’m not okay,” she whispers.

“I know, babe.”

“I’m not okay in the way that I shouldn’t be here tonight,” she says.

“What do you mean?” I can’t panic right now. I must stay calm, for her. For Gavin.

“I want to hurt myself,” she continues in a whisper.

Her words hit me like a bolt of lightning. Hurt herself? She’s never spoken like this. “Tell me why. What happened in the past week to make you snap?” I should be reacting to her words quicker than I am but dammit to f*cking hell, I want to know what happened.

“I broke. I’ve been barely holding it together for months. When I saw you holding Gavin in the hospital, you looked like your world was ending, like you’d give up one of your limbs to make him feel better. You looked the way I should have felt, and I felt nothing, AJ. Nothing. What mother doesn’t feel anything? I feel f*cking nothing! Nothing!” She starts to cry, and the tears barrel down her cheeks again. Is that what this is? She doesn’t feel like she’s good enough to be his mother?